In May of last year I had a conversation with someone who told me that Nokia Maps (Navteq) would effectively replace the infrastructure behind Bing Maps. I was surprised to say the least and wrote about it in a story entitled Bing Maps To Be Powered (Replaced) By Nokia? The impression I got is that Bing would control the presentation layer and search on top of maps but that the "guts" would come from Nokia/Navteq. At the time of the story Microsoft offered the following comment: Bing Maps has utilized Nokia content for road data, geo-coding and routing services for several years, through N [...]

Related Topics: Google: Maps & Local | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local | Microsoft: Bing Mobile | Microsoft: Mobile

Google is bringing the blue dot indoors. Google Maps for Android 6.0 is going to start showing interior maps of airports, select malls and retail stores in the US and Japan. In Japan transit stations are also mapped. The floor plan data has been obtained from all the participating entities, which Google's Steve Lee says are "very excited" to be a part of the program. Those entities include numerous Macy's, Bloomingdales, Home Depots and all US IKEA stores. (See the full US list at the bottom.) Below is a Google-provided screenshot of the Mall of America before interior maps and after: [...]

Related Topics: Google: Android | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local | Microsoft: Bing Mobile | Top News

Microsoft has updated its iPhone and Android apps to make them more consistent with the features and user experience in the HTML5 version of Bing. The HTML5 mobile web version of Bing had actually "gotten ahead" of the native apps that Microsoft had developed. The upgraded Bing app is an interesting hybrid approach as Microsoft seeks to leverage the capabilities of the handset but also make the app work across platforms in a consistent way: Rather than tightly binding functions into a mobile client, we want to embrace the drive towards exposing our functions via an HTML5 experience.  In o [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing Mobile

If you read this column on a regular basis, you may think that Google is the only game in mobile search. The fact is, SEOs optimize for traffic, and Google is the mobile search market leader, so it is often the focus of our mobile optimization efforts. But it’s not the only game in town. As someone who uses mobile search often, I am more often than not frustrated at the number of sites in the results that make me do extra work pinching and zooming to get the information I need. I’m hoping a mobile search engine can come along that will provide a better user experience than Google. An [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: Bing Mobile | Microsoft: Bing SEO | Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search

Bing has put considerable effort in the past several months into building out its deals content. First Bing introduced third party deals via its mobile website. It then created a retail-centric deals portal within Bing Shopping. More recently Microsoft added self-service group buying deals to the Bing Business Portal. And now there's a new product in Microsoft's deals mix: Bing Deals. (It was first noticed by TechCrunch.) It's a more "traditional," email-based daily deal offering vs. the company's earlier deal products and efforts (which are still ongoing). The new daily deals email capabil [...]

Related Topics: Google: Offers | Groupon | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local | Microsoft: Bing Mobile | Top News